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It’s just after sunrise in Toronto’s Eglinton West neighbourhood and Jorge Molina is taking a screw gun to a utility pole.

His red RAV4 overhangs a curb near Dewbourne Ave. and Bathurst St., hazards flashing. Construction workers eye him with suspicion.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission,” the forty-something artist will explain later from his cluttered basement studio in Swansea Village.

Molina’s not posting a missing cat flyer or an ad for junk removal, typically seen on these city poles. Instead, it’s a small 6”x6” canvas painting of the nearby sidewalk.

This is Molina’s 79th such painting. It’s part of what the artist has dubbed “The 416 Project.” He plans to paint and post 416 canvases to utility poles in 35 neighbourhoods throughout the 416 area code.

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“I’m using each neighbourhood — and the whole city — as my gallery,” says the artist-actor-filmmaker.

While city bylaws don’t allow for public art on utility poles, Molina has yet to face a fine and he hasn’t been told to stop. His wife, Elaine Mah, usually keeps watch in case parking enforcement “scoots us along,” she says.

The couple shares a Swansea home with their two Lhasa Apso-mixed rescue dogs, Farley and Gus, who gnaw at each other and circle around Molina’s paint-smeared Crocs as he works in his small basement studio. He wears clean green Crocs elsewhere in their home, the navy pair are reserved for the studio.

Dozens of acrylic paint markers litter his work space and hundreds of unopened canvases sit in boxes against one wall. The paintings — photographs transferred to canvas and brought to life with paint markers — depict mundane details of urban life in vibrant colours. One looks skyward at leafless tree branches and telephone wires. Another shows a bright yellow fire hydrant against a dull brown lawn.

Each piece Molina creates starts with an iPhone photo, which is brushed onto the canvas and then detailed by Molina. He says he wants Torontonians to see their city from a new perspective. (Todd Korol)

Molina wants Torontonians to see their city from a new perspective.

“You see the poles, the garbage cans, the sewer (grates). You see that stuff every day and ignore it. It just blends into the visual noise that we all see,” he says.

In his self-commissioned public art project, all Molina’s canvases — there are 10 to 15 in each neighbourhood — are free for the taking, using a Robertson head screwdriver. When each has been claimed that will “complete the installation,” Molina says. So far he’s installed pieces on poles in Swansea, Bloor West Village, the Junction, the Beach, the Upper Beach, Riverside, Leslieville, West Queen West, the Annex, and the Eglinton West areas.

Librarian Tracy Urquhart was getting off the streetcar when she spotted a painting in the Upper Beach near Gerrard St. and Woodbine Ave. She’d heard about the project on Twitter and had been on the lookout.

“I just found it really enchanting,” she says. “It encourages you to take a closer look at your hyper local environment.”

After two months, Molina is almost a quarter of the way into The 416 Project, which seems a tall order for one artist armed with Crayola window markers (gel-based markers he uses to enhance the colour of the images). But if Molina isn’t fazed by having hundreds more to go, his wife keeps the project in perspective.

“The scale of it still sort of staggers me,” says Mah, a tech professional.

Artist Jorge Molina has been working on posting these small canvas paintings throughout the city as part of "The 416 Project." Each canvas receives an acrylic gel treatment to protect it from the elements. (Todd Korol)

After community publications like the Bloor West Villager picked up on Molina’s project, it was featured on CBC’s Metro Morning and the canvases started to get attention on social media. The popularity of the project speaks to the love people have for city life, says Mah. The couple received an email from a woman in Winnipeg who heard about the project from her brother in Toronto and asked that he unscrew a canvass for her. The Manitoba 204 area code would have been much more manageable than 416, Mah jokes.

“It just goes to show that people, despite how much we all move around these days, we still have great affinity for our neighbourhoods,” she says.

Molina, who was born in Barcelona, Spain, and grew up in Alberta, says much of Toronto reminds him of his home country as well as his childhood on the prairies. “It’s a very international city,” he says, noting the diversity of the Eglinton West neighbourhood where he has posted 14 canvases near the laundromats and barber shops by Eglinton West Station and the parkettes on the edge of Forest Hill.

He hasn’t settled on which 416-area communities he’ll garnish next. But as long as there are empty wooden utility poles and untapped mundane urban imagery, Molina will be driven to make an appearance with his red RAV4 and screw gun.

In Molina’s studio

In his small Swansea Village studio, Moline is at work creating 416 canvas paintings that he aims to scatter around the city on utility poles. (Todd Korol)

The 416 Project process begins with an iPhone photo. Molina puts a filter on the image to bring out the colour. The photo is then printed in mirror image on a piece of paper as a 6”x6” square image.

The photo is brushed on to a canvass with an acrylic gel medium. After drying, the image will have transferred onto the canvass material.

A wet sponge removes the rest of the paper before adding colour.

Select areas are outlined with 0.8 drawing pen to bring out the lines.

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